


Once Forgotten

by PrincexSalem



Series: As the World Crumbles [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Companion Lavellan, F/M, Non Inquisitor Lavellan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-15 23:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16942683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincexSalem/pseuds/PrincexSalem
Summary: Names and souls are things that are often easily forgotten in the streams of time especially when there’s no one left to mourn. The wisps of a past life have been following Yaviel since Halamshiral and it’s only after the events of Trespasser that she finds out why.





	Once Forgotten

“Tarasillë.”

The first time she hears the name, it’s a whisper on the wind. A ghost or at least she assumes a ghostly sound from her lover. It’s late. They should have been asleep hours ago, not now settling in while the camp rustled with silence and half swallowed snores. Tarasillë. Maybe it isn’t a name at all. Maybe it’s a title or a word, some bit of elven she’s not familiar with. There are a lot of those, she’s realizing now.

“Who or what is…Tarasillë?” She finally asks, almost afraid her question will send him running. She’s still not used to having him this close without expecting him to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Curiosity over powers caution though and she props herself up on one elbow to see him properly. To watch him fumble over words and ways to answer or not answer her question. ‘You don’t have to answer.’ She almost says, stretching and curling back into her spot.

She shouldn’t have asked.

At least not right now.

“Tarasillë is-was someone I knew.” He finally answers and she lets the matter drop. No use in prying further, they need to sleep before it’s time to move camp.

The next time she hears the name - it’s a name now, she knows - it’s while rummaging through records on Mythal’s temple. Some fragment of an inscription lost to the ages. Tarasillë had been one of Mythal’s. Or at least A Tarasillë had been. Impossible for that to have been the same woman. Impossible for him to have known her if she had been. Then again, the fade showed things not even she could dispute.

Still.

Tarasillë. Dawn-singer.

Someone had called her that once. The memory twists her heart enough that she puts the scroll away and stands. “I hope you had a happier life than this, Tarasillë.” A prayer for a woman eons dead but it’s the best she can manage.

This woman is Mythal but not Mythal. Flemeth but not Flemeth. A goddess merged with a mortal woman until no one knew where one ended or begun. She hadn’t expected to be this close. To meet the god she’s so often prayed to. Or to be embraced so warmly while her stomach churned at her own cowardice. She’d borne her vallaslin once, had worn it with pride and then had cast it aside in a moment of sorrow and disgust.

Apologies are easy, only her sister and Morrigan would hear them if she could utter a word. Could muster a defence while the woman stared at them and smiled. Did the people proud? No. The people would shun her the moment they realized what she’d done.

“Your heart is too young to be so heavy, Dawn-singer.” The words are startling, but too ill timed for her to question. Dawn-singer. Tarasillë. Name and title both but too heavy for her to handle while she feels like crying. There is no time for tears, not with a dragon dropping from the sky to judge her twin.

Tarasillë. Dawn-singer.

The name haunts her now, pages of sketches strewn about and discarded among the untouched paints. The man is gone, disappearing into the wind with Corypheus’s end and what’s left of her dignity.

She should have known better than to trust someone with so many secrets. So many ghosts. But that was done. The damage too deep for her to even push it away.

Dawn-singer.

He’d called her that even after he’d pulled away. Not publicly no, but in the notes written beside drawings and reports and records. She isn’t sure if she should cry or not, the weight of the necklace heavy around her neck. The tears aren’t there though, just a hollowness as she bundles the pages up and sets them among the rest of his things. Memories of someone that had walked away.

Dawn-singer.

Maybe she could keep that name. Just like she’d keep the necklace and drawings. They were markers of happier times. Happier times when she didn’t swing between carving her own heart out and wanting to tear Thedas apart to find any trace of the man she’d loved.

Chains over chains, wards she’d strung herself whisper back and it’s all she can do to keep her composure. Composure that crumbles when they’re finally alone and she wheels away to avoid him.

Vhenan drifts into Tarasillë. Dawn-singer. The same reverence and pain hanging in both words.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” She rounds on him now, all fangs and leashed fury. “Tarasillë died in Arlathan, no?” He’s a god now but she can still see the shadow of the man she’d known and loved. Gods don’t quail before mortals, gods don’t flinch from anger. Gods didn’t bleed either but she can see the blood on this one, the bruises rising that make her heart ache despite the anger.

“Tarasillë did die in Arlathan.” The confirmation does nothing to cool her rage and she waits, expectant with a table between them. “She was…revived somehow.”

Her mouth opens, one heartbeat to another as she digs for words. Anything to fend off the sorrow she can see. Maybe she’d been wrong to ask, wrong to open this bag of worms especially at a time like this. But curiosity had always been one of her weaknesses.

“And..?”

On some level, she thinks she knows or at least senses it before he even says it. Though even that does nothing to soften the blow and the chill of it all racing down her spine.

“She became you.”

Tarasillë. Dawn-singer. Was it even possible to haunt yourself?


End file.
